HORATIO ALGER WITH A JUMP SHOT:
MICHAEL JORDAN AND THE AMERICAN
DREAM
Mary McDonald
I used to say this man was the Babe Ruth of basketball. I ’ve now come to believe
that Babe Ruth was the Michael Jordan of baseball.. .H e ’s living the American
dream. The American dream is reaching a point where you do everything you
want to do and do not do anything you don’t want to do.
Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf on Jordan’s retirement
After Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to the first of what would be three
consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) championships., Sports Il­
lustrated (SI) honored the occasion by naming Jordan the magazine’s “ 1991
Sportsman of the Year.” The cover of that December 23 issue featured a holo­
gram of Jordan smiling in three dimensions set across the red and black signature
colors of both his team, the Chicago Bulls, and the Air Jordan line of Nike athletic
sneakers. This multi-dimensional image was not only a first for SI, but according
to publisher Mark Mulvoy represented one of the most ambitious holograms ever
mass-produced. Apparently conventional forms of representation could not cap­
ture Jordan’s iconic status.
Consider the procedure Jordan endured while filming the pictures which
would compose the hologram cover. According to hologram “artist” Sharon
McCormack, Jordan had to sit patiently while being filmed and rotated 120 de­
grees at approximately one and one third revolutions per minute. Sitting quietly,
Jordan had to slowly start smiling, increasing the width to its maximum.
“Michael had a very hard job,” says McCormack. “He had to smile and exude
charisma in slow motion while keeping his body perfectly still. He couldn’t even
blink. He was very graceful and smooth” (Quoted in Mulvoy 4).
Richard Dyer offers a salient take on this quality of charisma which Jordan
exudes, apparently even when motionless. Charisma, the possession of some
exceptional, seemingly superhuman quality or qualities, must always be situated
culturally and historically among the various ideologies, ambiguities and contra­
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dictions of a particular era. Charisma is best understood as the star’s ability to
negotiate historically specific instabilities and contradictions.
In this paper I sketch out some of the significant issues, debates and ambigu­
ities which help to generate Jordan’s popularity and status as cultural icon.
Jordan’s appeal can be interpreted as a testament both to his own agency in craft­
ing a tremendous athletic talent and salable public persona as well as to the con­
vergence of a variety of cultural needs, practices and discourses within a particu­
lar historical moment. I focus my analysis on Jordan’s initial career in profes­
sional basketball which spans the years of 1984-1993, as this is the period when
Jordan rose to widespread visibility. This time frame parallels the ascent of the
Reagan-Bush era, a unique historical epoch characterized by a shift away from
the visible political activism of the 1960s and 1970s and toward socially conser­
vative world views.
First emerging under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and continu­
ing through today, this period, also known as post-Reagan America, nurtured an
increasingly vocal rhetoric which championed a return to “traditional family val­
ues.” These values were hardly traditional, but rather allowed for the sanctioning
of backlash politics generated most prominently by the New Right. These back­
lash campaigns had significant consequences: during the Reagan-Bush era, civil
rights legislation was rolled back and anti-pornography campaigns were waged
against artists, while corporate freedom and capital expanded. This period saw a
stifling of civil rights for both people of color and white women, a growing na­
tional deficit and a shrinking middle class (Giroux).
According to some conservatives, economic problems could be traced to the
“permissive” and “hedonistic” policies of big government. Bleeding heart liber­
alism, characterized by the expansion of the state’s social entitlement programs
including Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson initiated Great Society
and War on Poverty programs, merely offered a perversion of traditional Ameri­
can values. Illegitimate birth rates, joblessness and welfare dependency were all
created and/or reinforced by “economic incentives to bear out-of wedlock chil­
dren and the disincentives to work created by the Great Society” (Edsall and
Edsall 15).
Placing the future of America in the hands of God, family and traditional val­
ues, Ronald Reagan and the New Right skillfully mobilized the racist and sexist
sentiments of everyday working middle class Americans to demonize collectiv­
ism while advocating policies which favored individualistic and pro-business
agendas (White). Economically this meant the implementation of supply-side
economic policies, tax breaks for the wealthy, deregulation of big business and
heavy investment in military spending.
The supply-side policies of Reaganomics proved to be profitable for the rich as
the economic gap widened between rich and poor, a divide greater than at any
time in US history (Howe). No less a cultural authority than People magazine
offers a chilling perspective of the Reagan-Bush era during the 1980s, noting that
large scale economic changes made for “bad manners, mudslinging and ma­
chismo” (Lacayo 6). For example, the 1980s were:
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10 perilous years when the whole of public life took on the atmosphere of a slam
dance being cheered by a hockey crowd.. .Why did it happen in the ’80’s?.. .it could
have been the voodoo in the economy, where over the decade the stock market
boomed, but purchasing power declined and took two paychecks to provision one
household. The struggle to make ends meet can give a certain Darwinian sharpness
to daily life. (Lacayo 102)
The purpose of this project is to locate Jordan within the historical context of
the Reagan-Bush era and to make connections across that context. As an athlete,
Jordan is immediately linked to some of the prominent themes imbedded in
American history as sport connotes the “traditional” values of hard work, team­
work, character-building, competition and discipline. These ideologies took on
added significance during the Reagan-Bush era, often serving to justify eco­
nomic and social policies which largely favored the wealthy. Thus part of
Jordan ’s iconic status can be attributed to the ways his All-American image inter­
twine with and articulate the socially divisive tenor of the times.
My thinking has been greatly influenced by cultural studies approaches which
suggest that “culture is ordinary.” Thus my analytical focus is on everyday popu­
lar culture, “on the structures and practices within and through which modern
societies construct and circulate meanings and values” (Brantlinger 37). Cultural
analysis is a theoretical and political endeavor which explicates the meanings of
cultural forms while offering criticism and commentary on asymmetrical social
relations, particularly those related to race, class and gender.
In this paper I explore representations of Jordan in several textual artifacts:
advertisements, books, televised games, highlight videos, magazines and news­
paper sport sections. Indeed this is an easy task as Jordan is highly visible in both
sporting and advertising discourses. At the time of Jordan’s initial retirement
from basketball in 1993, Forbes magazine estimated Jordan’s 1993 “Madison
Avenue” income topped all other athletes at $32 million (Lane and Midgitt).
I am not interested in revealing the “real” person behind the public image of
Michael Jordan. Rather I examine the converging mediated discourses surround­
ing Jordan in order to analyze the crafted image of Jordan much as someone
would read a text to offer commentary. Such “textualization” is actually a meth­
odological strategy to explore the social relations and ideologies which make up
the larger world(s) we inhabit (Turner).
Stuart Hall recognizes the discursive and semiotic character of cultural ideolo­
gies, suggesting that ideologies serve as systems of representations or “systems
of meaning through which we represent the world to ourselves and one another”
(101). Social relations and world views are represented in speech, language and
signifying practices to acquire meaning and that “is why we have to deconstruct
language and behavior in order to decipher the patterns of ideological thinking
which are inscribed in them” (97).
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
The genesis of Michael Jordan’s carefully crafted, highly marketable image be­
gins with an often told tale. Cut from Laney High School’s varsity basketball
35
team as a sophomore in Wilmington, North Carolina, Jordan turned initial defeat
to his advantage, honing his skills all summer to emerge as a great player the fol­
lowing season. Jordan’s logic: “When a lot of people figured I couldn’t do some­
thing, that gave me the challenge to do it” (Quoted in Smith 9).
This parable reflects a classic American world view which suggests that free­
dom, opportunity and material success are available to all through hard work and
persistent effort. The American Dream is an ideology designed to reify the con­
tention that America’s democratic vision and capitalist economic system are
fundamentally fair despite enormous disparities in wealth and social status
(Jhally and Lewis).
Jordan’s quote also reflects the world view of Jordan’s corporate sponsor,
Nike, which implores consumers to “Just Do It,” suggesting a do-it-yourself
mentality is the way to improved fitness, health and consumption. The sentiment
expressed by Jordan and Nike resonates with some of the prominent slogans of
the Reagan-Bush era, one of the most popular being “Just Say No,” the cliche
from the national anti-drug campaign whose leading proponent was First Lady
Nancy Reagan. This slogan was a rallying point and was offered as a viable solu­
tion for the apparent moral decay and crisis of drug abuse in this country (Reeves
and Campbell).
Jordan’s and Nike’s will to “Just do it,” like Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No”
campaign, articulated the discourse of self-improvement and affirmation of
Reaganism, a simplistic sentimentality of renewal, revival and individualistic
action (Reeves and Campbell). The master narrator of this vision was Reagan
himself who offered compelling images, words and myths to resolve personal
and public crises. These rhetorical appeals, far from being the province of Ronald
Reagan, are endemic to America. Their reverberation throughout the culture dur­
ing the Reagan-Bush era was an attempt to renew faith in consumer capitalism by
affirming mythic tales of individualism, community and the American Dream
(Morreale; Reeves and Campbell).
The power of the American Dream is that it is widely available in all forms of
popular culture. Besides sporting narratives, both the television and film indus­
tries contribute with mythic depictions of rags-to-riches stories. “This whole
materialistic charade is fueled by the most influential cultural industry in the
United States: advertising” (Jhally and Lewis 140). The overwhelming message
of ads, according to Jhally and Lewis, is to consume, to exist in a state of want and
constant material desire.
“From the very beginning of his professional career, Jordan was consciously
marketed by his agency ProServ as a peripatetic vehicle of American fantasies of
capital accumulation and material consumption tied to Jordan’s personal mod­
esty and moral probity” (Dyson, 1993b, 68). While stories like Jordan’s achieve­
ment of the American Dream of material success are endemic to sport and Ameri­
can culture, in post-Reagan America this type of narrative served another func­
tion. They provided the organizing theme to promote the resurrection and eleva­
tion of celebratory tales of success which lent credibility to individualist and elit­
ist policies upon which social and economic policies were based. They helped to
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legitimate the contention of Reaganomics that economic growth depends upon
what Reeves and Campbell characterize as a type of “reverse Robin Hoodism,”
the slashing of taxes for the wealthy while cutting the social programs which aid
the poor.
During the Reagan-Bush era economic and social policies widened the eco­
nomic gap between wealthy and poor Americans (Clarke). Icons of success such
as Michael Jordan filled an ideological void suggesting that achieving the
American Dream is a matter of personal perseverance rather than the province of
those born into privilege (Reeves and Campbell). Thus the American Dream,
achieving the seemingly justified material fruits of hard work and labor, rein­
forces the desirability of individual autonomy upon which the ideology of rug­
ged individualism is based.
Jordan’s success in sport and advertising is powerful, resonating especially
with similar depictions of people of color achieving individual distinction. These
images proved to be significant, masking the perils of “reverse Robin Hoodism”
which disproportionately affected people of color, offering an illusion of equal­
ity for all (Reeves and Campbell). Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush pre­
sided over budget cuts, program changes and reorganizations in social programs
while opposing school busing, affirmative action and an aggressive enforcement
of civil rights laws (Shull).
As David Andrews has argued, perhaps the best example of an individual who
embodies the tremendous material success and public acclaim celebrated in
post-Reagan America is that of Bill Cosby. Cosby wrote a best-selling book in
1986 entitled Fatherhood and his television creation, The Bill Cosby Show, en­
joyed top rated status “year after year in the second half of the 1980’s” (Jhally and
Lewis 1). The parallels between Bill Cosby’s character Cliff Huxtable and
Michael Jordan are significant. Both began a run of national success in 1984, the
year of Reagan’s re-election, although Bill Cosby had prior ventures as a stand up
comedian and actor, most notably as the costar of the 1960s television show, I
Spy (Lewis and Jhally). Cosby is also identified with commercial sponsors, most
prominently Jell-O, just as Jordan is for Nike. Finally, both figures are linked to
kindred narratives, including that of the American Dream and an appreciation of
family life and children.
Just as Jordan successfully created a marketable image of black masculinity by
proving the will to “Just Do It,” so too did Bill Cosby consciously set out to con­
struct a positive vision of black family life. The Bill Cosby Show features a
nuclear family with father, Cliff Huxtable, as a successful obstetrician and
mother, Claire, as a prominent lawyer. The two have five loving, obedient chil­
dren and as the seasons pass, the Huxtable family is extended with in-laws and
grandchildren. Living in a comfortably decorated house, the Huxtables have ac­
cumulated the ultimate markers of success, living in the lap of consumer comfort
and familial bliss (Lewis and Jhally).
Cosby purposely created the show’s characters to counteract negative stereo­
typical mediated images which feature narrow, distorted and negative depictions
of blackness. There is a long history of this distortion and misrepresentation.
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Early film images offered socially constructed caricatures of African Ameri­
cans, visually depicted as the coon, the buck, the clown, the mammy, the darky,
the spook, the shiftless shine and the shuffling Negro (Dyson, 1993b). Radio and
then television merely updated these conventional practices.
Even when there has been growth in representing black characters, television has
often presented problematic versions of racial progress. With the likes of George
Jefferson, J. J. “Kid Dyn-o-mite” and Arnold or Webster, blacks were either highclass variations on the theme of the clown, or filling another social slot as a stereo­
typical slum dweller, or beneficiaries of white patrons-cum-adopti ve parents, whose
largesse brought domestic stability and upward mobility to chosen black children.
(Dyson, 1993b, 79)
Battling history and an unsympathetic entertainment industry, Cosby offered
the Huxtables as an alternative to these stereotypes. Ironically, the depiction of
the Huxtables as an upper-middle class family suggests that the show is represen­
tative of only a minority of Americans, a privileged few (Lewis and Jhally). Crit­
ics such as Marc Crispin Miller note the show ’s tendency to downplay the signifi­
cance of race while elevating the desirability of the American Dream, a plot
which Jordan has also embraced. Cosby steadfastly defends this strategy: “My
point is that this is an American family— an American family— and if you want
to live like they do, and you’re willing to work, the opportunity is there for you”
(Quoted in Zoglin 60).
Jordan’s reading of the larger meaning of his own athletic and advertising suc­
cess follows this sentiment as well.
I think sometimes I’m looked upon as not just a black person but as a person. And I
think that’s totally new ground for us—and for society. I’m happy to be a pioneer.
When I say, “Don’t think of me as white or black,” all I’m saying is: “View me as a
person.” I know my race and I know you know what my race is—but don’t magnify
it to let me know what my race is when I already know that. You’ve got all these white
kids who look up to me. They aren’t old enough to see color yet. If they see me not as
a black man but as a person they wish they could be like, they enjoy watching, enjoy
meeting and being around, that’s fine, I’m accomplishing a goal. (Quoted in Breskin
396)
Thus Cosby and Jordan echo a significant theme of Reaganism: an appeal to a
universal colorless culture which ignores the structural and ideological compo­
nents of racism. In discussing the Huxtable family, Lewis and Jhally offer an
analysis of the ideological significance of black success during the era of
Reagan-Bush. This critique is also instructive for understanding Michael Jordan.
The Cosby Show, by incorporating a black family into the American dream, plays an
important part in this ideological process. It symbolizes the fairness of the American
system. The fact that the Huxtables are an African American family is central to this
process: their success assures us that in the United States everyone, regardless of race
or creed, can enjoy material success. (73)
With this type of commonsense understanding, The Cosby Show and Jordan are
hailed by many white Americans in general, and by key members of the New
Right in particular, as proof that racism in American has been eradicated and that
the American Dream is available to those blacks who could pull themselves up by
38
their bootstraps (Lewis and Jhally; Andrews; McDonald). This type of sentiment
suggests that those African Americans who find themselves in poverty only have
themselves to blame.
Nationally syndicated columnist and New Right apologist, William F.
Buckley, Jr., proved to be the exemplar of the notion that inequality has been
eradicated by stating:
It is simply not correct, the evidence of one’s senses confirms, that race prejudice is
increasing in America. How does one know this? Simple, by the ratings of Bill
Cosby’s television show and the sales of his books. A nation simply does not idolize
members of a race that nation despises. (Quoted in Demeter 67)
The elevation of a television character to offer ideological “p ro o f’ of a more en­
lightened society, reinforces the “bootstraps” mentality of the Reagan-Bush era.
Yet, it is the larger cultural awareness of Bill Cosby which is key in this process,
for Lewis and Jhally argue that behind “the fictional doctor lies a man whose real
life is also a success story: fact and fiction coalesce to confirm the ‘truth’ they
represent” (8). This blurring of the apparent distinctive elements of fact and fic­
tion comes full circle in the ideological message the show represented. If the
American Dream proved to be unattainable, the fault was not with governmental
and societal indifference, but rather in the presumed pathological status of black
America. In short, people of color proved to be their own worst enemy
(Demeter).
Reading Sport: The Game Behind the Game
Just as with Cosby, the blurring of fact and fiction has coalesced as Jordan has
constructed a marketable public persona. Jordan the advertising creation is often
difficult to distinguish from Jordan the athlete (Andrews). Indeed the two are in­
trinsically linked every time Jordan laces up a pair of Air Jordans to play a profes­
sional basketball game. Furthermore, the illusion of apparent neutrality and
naturalness is prominent in sport where, unlike the plots of The Cosby Show, the
outcome of contests are never certain. Jordan’s body then becomes a powerful
site for the articulation and contestation for some of the individualistic
affirmations of Reaganism.
The association with commercialized sport provides a powerful entry into the
ideology of individualism or the bootstraps mentality which was widely pro­
moted during this period. The structure of commercial sport and mediated sport­
ing narratives have long assisted in the creation and celebration of parables of
individual success and freedom. Susan Birrell makes exactly this point noting
that sport
as a meritocracy based on skill quietly reaffirms our national commonsense: indi­
viduals who work hard and possess the right stuff will always prevail. Turned on its
head, this lesson becomes even more insidious: those who are at the top must have
risen to the top through fair means and thus deserve their position. In contrast those
not at the top do not possess the requisite talent for such privilege. Even the runner-up
is a loser. (213)
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The perceived status of sport as freely chosen leisure separate from political
influence make it an especially powerful site for the articulation of particular
world views (Sage). Despite evidence to the contrary, professional sport, in con­
junction with a largely uncritical sports media, has long promoted itself as a be­
nevolent industry which fosters many dramatic tales of individual achievement.
The entanglement of sports j ournalism in alliances of power and particular ide­
ologies which promote the American Dream is important to note. Journalists
play a central role in the construction and reconstruction of reason and nonreason
by presenting particular world views as if they were commonsense (Jhally;
Reeves and Campbell).
The themes promoted by sportswriters echo throughout the advertising and
corporate worlds as well. Sut Jhally suggests that the relationship between pro­
fessional sport industries, sports journalists, advertisers and individual athletes is
a mutually beneficial one characterized as the sport/media complex. This is an
especially emotionally powerful arrangement as most people experience sport as
spectators: the cultural experience of sport is largely a mediated one (Jhally).
Under the direction of ProServ, his marketing agency, Jordan is part of this
mutually beneficial economic union in which each component sells the other.
Sport has long served as fodder for media forms including radio, television and
newspapers which need to fill air and print space with interesting copy while de­
livering presumably male consumers for advertisers. Likewise sport entrepre­
neurs and athletes have reaped economic rewards thanks to the visibility offered
them via media and advertising discourses. Thus media legitimation of Michael
Jordan is nothing new; rather it is the most recent example of a mutually-beneficial union.
While professional sport has increasingly relied upon media and advertising
revenue for survival, the role of sports journalists in promoting sport and indi­
vidual athletic feats of (usually) masculine prowess has a long history. Think
only of the grand icon of sporting achievement, Babe Ruth, who benefited from
the sports writing prose of a group of reporters that emerged to promote the 1920s
as the Golden Age of Sport: Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, Hey wood Broun, and
John Kiernan among others (Susman). The grand narrative these writers crafted
to promote the star player of the New Y ork Y ankee baseball dynasty of the 1920s
and 1930s suggests that Ruth triumphed in the athletic arena, escaping a child­
hood of deprivation and poverty (Sobol).
While decades and distinctive historical contextualization separate the two,
Warren Susman’s astute analysis of Ruth as an “ideal hero for the world of con­
sumption” also seems particularly apt for understanding the creation of Jordan’s
image. Over a half century before Jordan, Ruth proved to be a particularly attrac­
tive commodity benefiting from sportswriting prose which exploited his extraor­
dinary athletic talent, masculine presence and embraceable personality complete
with a rags-to-riches story line (Susman).
Just as Jordan sought the services of agent David Falk, so too was Ruth active
in making himself into a marketable performer by hiring agent Christy Walsh
who arranged barnstorming tours and scheduled acting jobs in the movies and
40
vaudeville for Ruth. Walsh created a favorable impression of Ruth by hiring
prominent sportswriters to pen ghostwritten stories with Ruth’s byline. Before
the age of Ruth, baseball players received minor endorsement deals, if any. Un­
der the guidance of his agent and in a climate conducive to consumption, Ruth
hawked menswear, alligator shoes, hunting and fishing equipment, baseball
gear, smoking paraphenalia and automobiles in New York newspaper advertise­
ments (Sobol). Much like the Air Jordan line of athletic apparel and shoes, Babe
Ruth sweaters, caps, scoring aids, dolls, socks, gloves and uniforms also flooded
the market. Ruth’s non-baseball earnings during his fourteen-year career were
well over two million dollars in total, a figure which would be much more sub­
stantial if converted to today’s inflationary economy (Sobol).
While the basic formulaic narrative of individualism and the desirability of
consumption have remained intact since the time of Ruth, the meanings of this
narrative have shifted over the course of time. William Buckley should take note:
in the post-civil rights era this myth of meritocracy in sport has taken on a distinc­
tive tenor as it relates to African Americans. Sport, the commonsense story goes,
provides a level playing field for all. The best and most talented, regardless of
race, can rise through the sporting system and receive their just economic re­
wards. Yet, the numbers hardly substantiate this claim. Sport has proved to be an
avenue for reaching the American Dream of material success for only a small
percentage of people of color: “Fewer than 3,600 jobs exist in professional
sports, so the potential for sport to directly provide social mobility for significant
numbers of people is largely imaginary” (Sage 41). Additionally, sociological
studies reveal that the vast majority of Americans remain in the socio-economic
categories in which they were born (Sage).
Jordan is one of many prominent African-American athletes who seemingly
embody and thus legitimate the ideologies of individualism and the desirability
of the American Dream. Not surprisingly in an era distinctive for the symbolism
placed on the black body, the Reagan era saw the assent of what Cindy Patton
characterizes as the “Africanized Horatio Alger trope of athletes” who possess
the (New) Right stuff with modest beginnings, skill, desire, determination and
marketing savvy (Quoted in Cole and Denny 129).
Even before Jordan played a game in the NBA, in the early 1980’s, Earvin
“M agic” Johnson had parlayed an Algeresque image (while leading the Los
Angles Lakers to several championships) into what the December 3,1990 cover
of SI championed as “Magic Inc.” The accompanying photo is particularly tell­
ing featuring Johnson nattily attired in a blue pinstriped business suit reclining in
a leather executive chair hovering over the cut line “Earvin Johnson is lighting up
the Business World.” With the trademark “Magic” smile plastered across his
face, his right arm set heavenward as if to suggest “what can I say,” his left hand
fingers the classic masculine symbol of success, a large stogie cigar.
The text is equally laudatory, noting Johnson’s commitment to rise above his
working-class roots in Lansing, Michigan. As a teen taking a cleaning job in an
office building, Johnson would often envision his future.
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“I ’d sit back in one of those big chairs and put my feet on the desk,” Magic says, “and
start giving orders to my staff. ‘Do this, do that.’” It was fantasy stuff just like the
basketball games he would play in his head. He had no idea what he was telling his
staff to do except that it involved the achievement of truly big business. “I ’m a big
dreamer,” Magic says. Then: “For some reason, I’d still like to own an office build­
ing.” (Hoffer 110)
Making Michael: A Dream
By the time he took a brief retirement from professional basketball in October
1993, Jordan had acquired tremendous material wealth and public acclaim. Over
the course of his basketball career Jordan led the once hapless Bulls to three con­
secutive NBA titles while winning individual accolades such as the Most Valu­
able Player Trophy three times. Like their praise for Magic Johnson, sports re­
porters lauded the ways Jordan achieved these goals noting his ability to blend
exceptional individual skills into the workings of the team (Naughton).
These achievements proved to be the completion of a carefully orchestrated
and by then well-established image. Early in Jordan’s professional basketball
career, agent David Falk, Nike account creator and Wiedon and Kennedy em­
ployee Jim Riswold and NBA promoters all assisted in crafting yet another mar­
ketable story line. In an era known for promoting mythical tales to serve particu­
lar purposes a bit of embellishment was necessary, for Jordan deviates somewhat
from the working-class roots of Johnson and the poverty of Ruth. With a modest
middle-class background, the classic tale of overcoming early economic hard­
ship, the proverbial rags-to-riches tale, could not be invoked here. The story
which defines Jordan’s image then is the disappointment of being cut from the
high school team: Jordan’s humble beginnings begin with an impoverished bas­
ketball talent.
Jordan is active in recreating this image for himself. In the first of three home
videos about Michael Jordan produced in 1989 by CBS Fox in cooperation with
NBA Entertainment, entitled Michael Jordan: Come Fly With Me , a shot of the
Laney High School sign appears with the following voice-over: “But greatness
sometimes springs from humble beginnings. As a five-foot-eleven sophomore,
young Michael was noticeably absent from the varsity team” (Sperling).
The scene shifts to Laney High School coach Fred Lynch who expresses a par­
ticularly salient confession.
Yes, I’m the coach who cut Michael as a sophomore. We thought at the time it was the
best thing for him and our basketball program. He was still growing, he was a good
ball player, but we did not think he was good enough yet to make the contribution on
the varsity that we needed. (Sperling)
Against images of Jordan running and scoring on the basketball court the an­
nouncer booms:
Determined to prove his coach wrong, Michael Jordan worked harder than ever,
growing four inches and improving dramatically over the next two years. He would
shatter all of Laney’s scoring records while leading the Buccaneers to their first ever
conference championship. (Sperling)
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This triumph-over-tragedy narrative proves to be the entire plot for the next
video entitled Michael Jordan’s Playground which was produced in 1991. Here
Jordan’s experience of being cut from the team provides the basis for a fictional
story line featuring young Walt Preston who did not make his Eastside High
School basketball team. The words of Preston’s would-be coach ring out over
and over as Preston practices diligently on the playground: “For those of you
guys who did not make it, Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball
team and he came back a better player.” Then amidst Svengali music which sug­
gests spirituality, Jordan makes a God-like visitation offering athletic dispensa­
tion to a stunned Preston.
Complete with action highlights of Jordan’s most spectacular moves set to
music and vignettes featuring fellow NBA players and coaches lauding Jordan’s
extraordinary talents the story within the story progresses.
Jordan:
In the NBA, there’s a lot of great athletes, but it’s your determination
which sets you apart.
Preston: I hustled and I hustled and I played as hard as I could but it did not matter.
Jordan: O.K. Why did you get cut?
Preston: Because I got abused. I mean coach had his mind made up. There was noth­
ing I could do.
Jordan: Well you go back and change his mind. Look, when I first came into the
league all people thought of Michael Jordan was look at him dunk or how
many points did he score. No one really knew that I could play defense.
That’s what you need to do. You got to show them that you’re tough— you
can do what you need to do to win. (Sperling)
Predictably, due to Jordan’s wise counsel and encouragement, Preston makes the
team and is even singled out by the coach for spectacular play. The story con­
cludes with a music video featuring Jordan and the group, the “Full Force All
Stars” singing and dancing to the tune “Anything’s Possible,” interspersed with
game highlights of Jordan. The message for the audience is unmistakable: suc­
cess or failure reside in the hands of individuals and failure can not be blamed on
any institutional or ideological barriers. Individual effort is all that matters: just
do it.
Love o f the Game
Overcoming adversity is a recurring theme in the discourses surrounding Jordan.
While the story about his high school defeat and triumph was consciously embel­
lished and retold to establish Jordan’s character, a couple of publicized incidents
early in his career provided Jordan with additional sympathy. As a second-year
pro, Jordan broke his left foot and was forced to sit out the majority of the basket­
ball season.
While sports writers lamented Jordan’s time away from the game his status was
discussed much differently in the pages of Advertising Age. “Any time an athlete
is hurt, there is a natural dampening of enthusiasm in some marketing programs,
but that is purely a psychological point of view,” said Donald Dell, chair of
ProServ, Jordan’s representative agency. “It is rather ironic in that he had more
43
time for personal appearances and photo opportunities,” continues Dell (Quoted
in Fitch 16). Indeed, during his recuperation Jordan was able to solidify his posi­
tion in the advertising world spending time with individuals from Nike, Coca
Cola and McDonald’s. After his injury Jordan came back to set an NBA scoring
record. “You can’t buy that kind of PR value,” said Dell. “His injury had a happy
ending” (Quoted in Fitch).
The incident’s resolution provided apparent proof that Jordan was worthy of
public admiration, for unlike other highly paid athletes, Jordan possessed a true
love of the game. Ignoring the wishes of both the Bulls management and his
agent, David Falk, Jordan rejoined the team just in time to lead them into the play­
offs.
Bob Sakamoto (1986a) of the Chicago Tribune placed this spin on the inci­
dent:
Usually, Michael Jordan isn’t a disobedient kind of a guy. But this is one time the
Bulls are glad he is going to do things his own way. The injured superstar was advised
by his agent David Falk to sit out the remainder of the season while recuperating from
a broken bone in his left foot. Jordan politely said no. (1)
For Jordan to “just say no” proved his self-reliance by standing up to those who
would deny his love of the game. Opting for damage control, Bulls owner Jerry
Reinsdorf and general manager Jerry Krause finally acquiesced to Jordan’s de­
mands with one stipulation: limited playing time (Sakamoto, 1986b). Still Jor­
dan was defiant, accusing management of not being committed to winning, and
the evolving soap opera played out in the pages of the Chicago Tribune.
Chicago Bulls beat writer Bob Sakamoto (1986c) published Jordan’s suspi­
cions that the Bulls were limiting the playing time of the team ’s best player to
qualify for the college draft lottery, which is awarded to the teams with the
league’s worst records.
“Losing games on purpose reflects what type of person you really are,” Jordan said.
“No one should always try to lose to get something better. You should always try to
make the best with what you have. If they really wanted to make the playoffs, I’d be
in there whenever we had a chance to win a game.” (6)
There is a message in Jordan’s defiance which can be ascertained only by exam­
ining who and what Jordan challenged, for Jordan was standing up to the absur­
dity of needless regulation and authority which stifled both his personal creativ­
ity and the team’s production. Jordan would get into another well-publicized tiff
with management the following season for similar reasons: Jordan accused then
head coach Doug Collins of fudging the score, placing Jordan’s team on the los­
ing end during a practice scrimmage. Jordan stormed out of the gym fearing he
would say something he’d regret later and, according to Collins, “it seemed like
he didn’t want to listen to me” (Quoted in Sakamoto, 1987,1).
“I would have been steaming,” [Jordan] said. “It would’ve just been like the time I
broke my foot. I couldn’t just sit there and watch my team lose. So I came home and
cooled off. It’s my competitive attitude. I want to win, and I don’t want people stack­
ing the odds against me to make me lose.” (Quoted in Sakamoto, 1987,4)
44
These scenarios sound surprisingly like the plots of some of the most popular
films of the Reagan era. So too did masculine heroes of 1980s popular films act
heroically, not in defiance of a corrupt society, but in defiance of large and inef­
fective institutional bureaucracies. As Susan Jeffords argues, hard-bodied action
heroes like John Rambo are pitted against bureaucrats who have lost touch with
what’s really important and have thus failed to meet the needs of individuals.
This of course is the primary theme of Reaganism, decreasing the size of govern­
ment itself and cutting unwieldy bureaucracies to serve the real desires of aver­
age Americans (Jeffords).
When injured, Jordan thinks only of his desire to play basketball.
It’s a risk for me, but it’s not a financial decision. Basketball is my dream, my love.
I ’m not worried about the financial p art.. .I’m not a piece of property. I don’t care
what they pay me. I’m still a human being. (Quoted in Sakamoto, 1986d, 4)
A happy ending is found in both scenarios with management’s realization that
Jordan was right all along. The needs of the individual player are ensured during
Jordan’s next contract negotiation in 1988 in which Jordan signs for $28 million
over eight years, making him the highest paid player in team sport history
(Sakamoto, 1988). As equally publicized as those figures was a unique provision
known as the “love of the game” clause. This provision reaffirms Jordan’s right
to play basketball anytime he wishes, protecting him from liability from any bas­
ketball related injury. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf has come full circle: “Maybe this
isn’t the best decision, but how can I say no to Michael Jordan” (Quoted in
Sakamoto, 1988,5).
The “love of the game” clause distanced Jordan from public perception of indi­
vidual greed. In an age where athletes’ salaries are rapidly escalating, Jordan is
the embodiment of a nostalgic and seemingly purer vision of what sport was
meant to be all about: something to be pursued for enjoyment and fun. The “love
of the game” clause suggests that Jordan is not an aloof hero; rather, Jordan rep­
resents an every-day American possessing a healthy dose of passion, talent and
self-reliance. With hard work and persistence, the athlete who was once cut from
the high school team has earned $28 million receiving the just rewards of a “fair”
system. Michael Jordan is the embodiment of the American Dream, lending fur­
ther credibility to what Reeves and Campbell identify as a central tenant of
Reaganism: history is made through the inspirational acts of outstanding indi­
viduals.
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